Tainted Mountain

by Shannon Baker

  The little man avoided her money and shoved a small wooden doll into her hand. In an accented voice shaky with age, he said, “Not for sale. For you. For the moun-ain.”

  She looked down. With its slit eyes and plug nose, the masked face of the doll looked creepy. The doll wore a tunic of the same blue fabric as the old man’s sash. He held a hatchet in one hand, feathers in another.

  Raymond startled her with a whack on her back. “It’s showtime.”

  Nora looked up to return the kachina doll, but the little man was gone. She searched the crowd for sign of his thick, black hair like a bowl he tied to his head with a weathered red strip of fabric. He’d disappeared. First the apparition in the woods, then the phantom bathroom stabber, and now a harmless kachina salesman? No doubt she was headed for the loony bin.

  “Big Elk’s got the crowd all fired up. You gotta get out there and have your say or the media will take his side.”

  Ben-Hur’s chariot race couldn’t thunder louder than the thoughts in her head. Where the hell was Scott? Kachina Ski was his business, too.

  Her slick dress shoes offered no traction to fight Raymond as he propelled her toward certain doom.

  Raymond inspected her. “You didn’t put on lipstick. And what happened to your ankle?”

  Nora followed his gaze and was surprised by the thin line of blood oozing from the slash just above her ankle bone. She felt the sting for the first time.

  “Ms. Abbott,” a voice spoke with unquestioning authority, drawing her attention. With the confident air of success and an impeccable Western suit and ostrich-skin cowboy boots, Barrett McCreary looked every bit the part he played as an international icon in the energy business.

  Raymond clucked like a hen, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, and bent to dab at the sliver of blood on her ankle.

  Already breathless, Nora was now tongue-tied. In business school she’d written a paper on McCreary Energy and its owner. Barrett McCreary was her ideal role model: a tycoon with environmental conscience.

  He held out his hand. Raymond elbowed Nora. She transferred the kachina and crumpled twenty to her left hand, wiped her sweaty palm on her dress, and grasped Barrett’s hand.

  “I’m Barrett McCreary. Congratulations on your victory.”

  Through the rush of blood in her head, she managed not to stammer or choke. “Thank you.”

  The sandy-haired man she’d bumped into earlier advanced on Barrett as he moved away from her. She’d read in the paper that Barrett intended to resurrect uranium mining in the area, and she was somewhat grateful for the diversion. Now the enviros would have their pick of causes to attack.

  Raymond tugged Nora toward the door as she tried to invoke Barrett’s spirit of confidence. She stepped through the courthouse door …

  And the confidence evaporated. Nora fought the urge to dive back into the courtroom and slide under a table. The blast of high altitude sunshine didn’t blind her to the crowd gathered in the courthouse plaza. Sure, this was Flagstaff, so it didn’t take a lot of people to fill the small plaza, but a hundred angry protesters increased the churning in Nora’s gut by two hundred percent. She felt sure the tire-slasher, the rock thrower, and probably the ankle-slitter were looming somewhere in the crowd.

  A voice issued from a bullhorn with nauseating familiarity. Big Elk. He stood on the steps, his back to her, screeching to the angry mob. “Kachina Ski will pump 1.5 million gallons of water per day during the ski season. That’s the blood of our Mother splattered on the ground.”

  The crowd was mostly young Natives, eager for Big Elk’s speech. A few gray heads dotted the bunch. Nora called them the Guilty White People. They followed Big Elk around the country, living off their trust funds and trying to make up for their ancestors’ exploitation of the indigenous peoples of the world.

  She needed her husband now; she shouldn’t have to do this alone. Where is Scott? A trickle of sweat rounded the small of her back.

  Big Elk’s beak-like nose rubbed on the horn as he spewed vitriol. “It’s regrettable that the courts place the profitability of a playground over the deeply held religious and cultural convictions of hundreds of thousands of indigenous peoples.”

  Where was that spontaneous combustion when you needed it?

  Since she couldn’t achieve incendiary suicide, Nora took a deep breath. It didn’t calm her. She squeezed sweaty palms around the crude doll and twenty dollars.

  Raymond gave her a gentle shove. “You’ve done tougher stints than this. Go get ’em, Tiger.”

  Nora’s blood pressure spiked another ten points as she readied to thwart Big Elk.

  With his skin looking more sunburned than Native red, Big Elk squawked like an injured chicken. “Why is there global warming? Why 9/11 and the hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, earthquakes? Because we are allowing our sacred mountain to be desecrated. The mountain is home to the kachinas. We must protect their sacred place!” His limp gray ponytail whipped side to side when he raised a fist and started a chant.

  Many of the people shouted their agreement.

  I can’t listen to another plea to keep Mother Earth cloaked in her burqa and hidden from the modern world. Nora loved her mountain as much as any Native, and she would never do anything to harm it. Spraying water meant an end to its suffering from drought and a return to biodiversity. The runoff would eventually filter back into the underground aquifer, so there would be very little net loss to the water table. She’d vowed to fight for her mountain when Kachina Ski became hers. She couldn’t back down now.

  Like the Leonard Bernstein of activist rallies, Big Elk conducted the crowd to a crescendo. “The courts gave her permission to destroy the home of the kachinas, but there is a higher judge. We must fight for the kachinas of the mountain!”

  Raymond nudged her. “You need to make a move here.”

  Now that Big Elk whetted the crowd’s bloodlust, she was supposed to speak reason? Right. Nora couldn’t present an argument to Native Americans and enviros who thought today’s decision was akin to granting her legal right to blow up the Washington Monument. She’d be lucky if they didn’t shoot her full of arrows.

  She needed a savior, but Scott riding in on his white stallion to save her seemed about as likely as the sky opening up and ending the drought. Nora took a deep breath. Be Barrett.

  She marched straight to Big Elk. If her legs trembled, she didn’t acknowledge it; if her heart hammered, she ignored that too. No one needed to know her fear loomed so large she barely kept from peeing her pants. With her head erect, she called forth the dignity and poise of her mother, Abigail.

  Ignoring Big Elk’s murderous glare, she stepped in front of him and noticed for the first time that he stood several inches shorter than her five seven. No wonder he had the vicious bark of a little dog. She shouted, “Thank you, Mr. Big Elk.”

  She had testified in the courts, given interviews for the media, put her money and life on the line for this. She could certainly overcome fear of public speaking. “I’m Nora Abbott, owner and manager of Kachina Ski.”

  Boos and hisses.

  “How would you like it if I pissed in your church?” someone yelled at her. Nothing new. Tainted water on a holy site. The analogy made sense to them.

  People shouted in a jumble of heat and temper. “Go back to your white world and leave us alone!”

  Two cops in uniform stood at the back of the crowd. They looked alert and focused on the steps.

  More people joined in the insults, and soon distinct words disintegrated into swelling outrage.

  Was it her imagination or did the crowd inch up on her?

  They’d settle down and act civilized any minute now. Sun penetrated her skin, singeing her insides. Up on her mountain it would be cool with a slight breeze, the pines letting off their summer tang.

  Just then Scott rounded the corner of the courthouse
plaza, his dark curls as reassuring as a troop flag. Her cavalry of one. Nora nearly collapsed with relief.

  A tall Native American with blue-black hair down to his waist stepped forward, his blazing eyes scorching her. “Get the hell out of our sacred places!”

  The cops waded through the knot of protesters in slow motion. Others jeered and shouted in a confusion of voices.

  Scott wasn’t even looking her way now. Nora’s courage dissolved like a tiny levy in a big flood. Instead of cutting through the crowd like a knight on his charger, Scott hurried in the wrong direction toward someone else. Barrett McCreary? The older man strode away from the courthouse. Scott bee-lined for him, an uncharacteristic frown marring his mischievous face.

  The scene around her deteriorated as her eyes came back to the people in front of her. The livid young man climbed a step, his face angry as the fires of hell. “You can pack up and leave on your own or not, but you will leave.”

  Others stepped up, and Nora’s fear shot from her heart and climbed up her throat. What had she planned to say?

  The man climbed again, and a pretty girl followed. His teeth looked like the fangs of a wolf, ready to shred her flesh. “You don’t belong on the mountain.”

  The cries from the crowd grew even louder now. “Save our Peaks!” “Don’t desecrate the sacred Mother!” “You don’t belong here!” Eyes full of vengeance, mouths opened in escalating rage, they shouted at her.

  And Scott was off on his own mission. Cops only halfway to the steps. No help in sight.

  The young girl’s pretty eyes shone with excitement and she placed her hand on the angry young man’s muscled shoulder.

  He looked ready to tear out her jugular with his hands.

  Nora backed up, panicked and frozen in place.

  The guy leapt up the last step and advanced on her. “This moun-

  tain was given to us to keep sacred for the whole world.”

  The girl jumped up on the step, close behind him.

  Nora took another step back and bumped into the courthouse wall.

  The cops couldn’t get to her in time. More people pushed toward her, forming a wall of bodies that blocked her from sight. Scott wouldn’t see her now even if he looked.

  Malevolence shooting from his eyes, the tall Native American pulled something from his pocket. Impossible against the riotous clatter of the surging crowd, Nora heard the swisht of a blade jumping from a handle.

  Three

  Barrett McCreary III slid his Serengeti sunglasses over his nose, cutting the glare from the plaza. Too damn bad the glasses couldn’t hide the sight of Big Elk and his rant.

  “Barrett.”

  Shit. Another idiot holding him up.

  Cole Huntsman. For a smart man, an expert on uranium mining, he sure dressed like an illiterate granola. Cole pushed his shaggy pale hair from his forehead. “I found that study on in situ mining in Canada you asked me about.”

  “It hasn’t been five minutes since we spoke.”

  Cole held up one of those fancy phones that could contact the moon and download an encyclopedia, if anyone knew how to use an encyclopedia anymore. “I e-mailed it to you.”

  Even if he looked like a tree-hugger, this guy impressed Barrett. He was smart, efficient, and not one to waste Barrett’s time. “Nice work.”

  A woman’s voice sounded from the courthouse steps, startling Barrett with its clarity. Across the courtyard, Nora Abbott stood on the steps, looking remarkably cool for the mess she’d put herself in. Both Barrett and Cole focused on her addressing the hostile crowd. That coppery hair and bright eyes made her cute as a penny, but she had to be smart too, to keep that ski area running through this drought. She should know better than to throw herself in front of that mob.

  But that was not his problem. He hurried across the plaza while Cole was distracted. Barrett wanted nothing more than to get home, shed this stupid suit and tie, and get down to business. With the congressional hearings on uranium mining set for next week, there were palms to grease, weight to sling around, and dirt to dig.

  He hadn’t been quick enough. Around the corner popped Scott Abbott. Just who he didn’t want to see. And certainly not in public.

  “I need to talk to you,” Scott said.

  “Not here.”

  Crowd clatter rose from the platform.

  “Tomorrow, then. On the mountain,” Scott said.

  “Six a.m. There shouldn’t be anyone on the trail that early.”

  Scott squinted toward the noisy courthouse. His eyes widened when he saw his wife and, without another word to Barrett, he elbowed his way into the crowd.

  Barrett didn’t want to wait around for the finale. Big Elk had succeeded in his typical mischief. The brothers and sisters to the moon and sun were storming the steps. Par for Big Elk’s course. He took a last look at the crowd and turned to leave.

  Wait.

  He spun back toward the steps.

  It was her.

  How could she be standing there? A train wreck of memory slammed into his gut in an explosion of pain followed by paralysis. His mind spun back forty years. He saw the woman he loved smiling at him, her shining black hair and turquoise necklace catching the sun and tossing it back for everyone’s delight.

  Ester.

  He sucked in air, fighting for reality. Ester, in her velvet skirt, silver earrings, Concho belt …

  But this girl on the steps wore jeans. No turquoise and silver glinted.

  And Ester would never set foot in this plaza or anywhere else again.

  Slowly it started to make sense. The girl amid the mob advancing on Nora Abbott was his Heather. Not Ester. Heather. He didn’t know the black-haired delinquent she followed, but he would find out. No Native American jerk-off, angry at the world and looking for a handout, was going to get near his Heather. The boy would disappear from her life.

  And that damned Scott Abbott needed to disappear too. All in a day’s work for Barrett.

  He was a virtual magician when it came to vanishing people.

  Four

  A hand shot out, the blade aimed for Nora’s belly.

  She lost her balance. One foot slid and she crashed to her knees. She was saved from that thrust, but she had no hope of avoiding the next.

  She squeezed her eyes closed, expecting the burn of flesh as the knife sliced between her ribs into her lungs. Instead of the pain of the blade stabbing through her skin, a hand closed around her wrist and jerked her to her feet. She opened her eyes and looked into the face of the enviro who’d knocked against her in the hall and accosted Barrett McCreary. Probably some Earth Firster who would turn her over to Big Elk and his henchmen.

  He shoved her behind his back and faced outward. “Back off!” he yelled at the crowd.

  The cops finally infiltrated the mob and shouted orders to move back. Nora focused her frightened eyes on the crowd, but the slasher was nowhere in sight. He’d vanished from the courthouse steps as completely as he had from the bathroom. Other hate-filled faces glared at her, still thirsty for blood.

  The enviro pulled her through a break in the crowd and down the steps. As they ran across the street, she stumbled on the curb, reaching for his arm.

  The kachina doll splashed into the gutter and her twenty dollar bill fluttered away on a breeze. Nora’s fingers clutched at the sudden emptiness in her hand. Losing her last twenty stung, but seeing the kachina, its mask broken and floating in the filth of the gutter, punched a hole in her heart. Even if she didn’t believe in its supernatural powers, the old man probably carved his heart into the doll, and it felt wrong to abandon it. She tugged away from the enviro, determined to save the kachina.

  He closed his hand around hers and dragged her down the sidewalk into a parking lot. He gently pushed her into the shade next to a building and stood in front of her. “Are you okay?”
>
  If okay meant terrified, shaken, and mad enough to spit bullets, then yes, she felt okay. She nodded, trying to catch her breath.

  He studied her and bent down to wipe the line of blood from her ankle with the cuff of his sleeve. He stood. “I’m Cole Huntsman.”

  From murder attempt to garden party introductions in a matter of seconds. The day went from weird to bizarre. Still, the impeccable manners she was raised with surfaced. “Nora.”

  “Hey!” a voice shouted.

  Cole swung around, stepping in front of Nora.

  Scott strode up to him. “Who are you?”

  Of course Scott would be protective against a stranger. Nora hurried to explain. “He helped me get away.”

  Scott didn’t look pleased, but he didn’t start swinging. “Well, thanks. But I was on my way.”

  “Cole, this is my husband, Scott Abbott.”

  Cole squinted as if assessing. “Scott Abbott.” He stood in awkward silence for a moment, then said, “Well, you don’t need me hanging around here so … ” Cole started to walk away.

  Nora jumped forward. “Wait.”

  A smile, more in his eyes than on his lips, lit Cole’s face.

  “I just wanted to say thanks.”

  He put a finger to his forehead as if tipping his hat, a boyish grin spreading across his face. “Good to meet you, Nora.” He strode out of the parking lot and around the corner.

  Nora switched her attention to Scott, eager to feel the safety of his arms around her. He’d come for her. Late, sure, but he was here now.

  “Have you had enough, yet?” Scott’s eyes flashed with anger.

  She’d expected support, and his reaction smacked her upside the head. Once again, her struggle to please him had backfired. She masked her hurt. “As a matter of fact, I have. Enough of struggling to make Kachina Ski earn a living in a drought. Enough of religious freaks and rabid environmentalists and Crazy Horse wannabees sticking their nose in my business. And I’ve really had enough of you acting like I’m the devil.”